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open to remote nations the rare products of human skill and intelligence Before three years are over, I feel certain the New-Zealanders will be slaughtering our fellow-countrymen with six-shooters from Sheffield, and many a patriot in Siberia will carry on his wrists the "last thing in handcuffs" that Birmingham has turned out.

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We have been told, however, that the sovereigns who have assembled at Paris did not resort there for vulgar sight-seeing that they made the Exhibition a mere pretext, and came there just as an astute diplomatist may occasionally. be seen to saunter into an operabox, little caring, indeed, for the legs of the ballet, but very eager to hunt out the secret of some floating rumour, and the meaning of some cunning move on the part of a colleague; and this explanation is possibly not remote from the truth. Fortunately or unfortunately for the world-I'm not very sure which -these illustrious personages have not many occasions when they can meet each other. Setting aside minor considerations, the world keeps a too jealous watch on all their movements; and the fluctuations of the Stock Exchange reflect too sensitively even their very slightest steps to make such things possible. It is somewhat humiliating to own it, but it is the simple fact, that the Emperor of Russia could not drink the waters of Vichy, nor the King of Prussia correct his acidity with Carlsbad, without inflicting ruin on many a respectable family, and bringing desolation and misery into many a household. We never can bring ourselves to believe that these people are not scheming and plotting. We cannot be brought to admit that these are passing moments in their lives, when they can think of "that poor creature, small beer."

It is true there is something reassuring in the thought that the destinies of the world are not so

entirely in the keeping of these mighty personages as at first blush they might seem to be; and a European sovereign, accompanied by his prime minister, strongly reminds one of those smart four-inhands which young gentlemen, just come of age, affect to drive-having previously secured a clever coachman, who sits on the near side of the box, and holds himself ready to take the ribbons whenever the nags show signs of being unmanageable. "Touch that wheeler, your honour; make that grey come up to his collar," whispers coachee; and so does your Czar or Kaiser take in his statecraft from Gortschakoff or Beust, well knowing the whole time that all his driving is at best but amateurship, and that if it should come to an ugly bit of road, or a block on the way, the sooner he resigns the reins the better. Louis Napoleon, however, affects to be his own coachman, and that drive to Mexico shows with what success. As for the King of Prussia, he has taken to the ribbons late in life, and never properly understood what good coaching is. All his early experiences were in a one-horse buggy, and it is rather startling to the best of nerves to sit behind four fiery nags, while your coachman is perpetually chirping and gee-hupping to them, as M. Bismark will do, no matter whether there are carts in the way or closed toll-bars right in front of them.

Now if these people really wanted to show us that they could drive, why don't they come out without the coachman? Leave Beust and Bismark at home, and let us see how you'll tool the team. I'd like to have seen how Louis Napoleon himself would have got round that sharp corner at Luxemburg if one of our people hadn't told him to lie by for a moment till that lumbering old Prussian eilwagen had passed. It is a simple fact that they all drive precious badly, and the only fellows who make a good figure

on the road are such as have wit enough to keep a clever coachman, and give him a liberal allowance for the stable.

The Press of Europe-for though we in England began the movement all the others are at it now hard and fast-are strenuously advising economy and retrenchment. They say that if one would consent to drive a pair, or even a single horse, the others would soon follow, and thus a considerable saving be effected— no bad thing, when it is remembered that in this passion of rivalry and display we are all living beyond our means. What they say is, These flashy equipages are things of the past; our ancestors affected them, just as they affected a score of other barbarisms that we are intelligent enough to have renounced; the spirit of our age rejects such things; men have grown more moderate in themselves and more considerate towards others; and that vulgar desire for display does not belong to our era. And they add, The first man who takes to the road with a one-horse buggy will be the most popular person in Europe.

Not only do these advocates of retrenchment show the great benefit that will accrue from a diminished expenditure, and the opportunity that such will offer for more profitable employ of money, but they go on to enumerate all the accidents and calamities that have come of reckless driving, and the frequent collisions which we hear of in every part of Europe; and lastly, they advert to a fact which, though apparently a small one, has a wonderful significance and a deep importance, when one comes to think of

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Now there's not a doubt that for one man who can drive four-in-hand well you will find five hundred who can tool a tax-cart, and if you choose to come down to the humble equipage you will not be so cruelly exposed to the insolent demands of a self-important flunkey. These halfdozen fellows-for, as I have said above, there are not more of them

might strike to-morrow, and where should we all be, I ask you, if they were to declare that they'd not drive any more, under heaven knows what conditions?

Seriously, however, this suggestion of economy and reduced expenditure, to have had any chance of success, should not have come from England. The difficulty with which we maintain a very small army at its full complement, and the disfavour with which our people, in their sturdy independence, regard all military service, are facts patent to all. That we grudge the cost of a force which makes the patrol of the globe is but too well known; nor has a minister any so sure and short a road to popularity in England as by cutting down the army estimates. Foreigners seeing this, and reading, as they do, the debates in our House, naturally say, "England feels all the inferiority her diminished military power inflicts upon her, and as she cannot come up to us, pleasantly suggests that we should come down to her." In fact, it is pretty like the proposition of a commercial traveller, that for the future no man should drive anything but a one-horse tax-cart. Continental nations, however, have

other ambitions than trade successes. I am not going to defend or attack them, but I am forced to admit, that the spirit which for some years back has animated our people, is not that of the rest of Europe, and Louis Napoleon-though possibly the utterance was not very discreet —was not wide of the mark when he declared that the greatness of a nation was in the direct ratio of the squares of its standing army. Not only, then, was England wanting in the high authority to speak on such a subject, but her advice, when she gave it, became naturally matter of suspicion. "Cut off your leg," cries the wooden-legged man, "and I'll run you for a hundred yards." But I don't think the biped is obliged to recognise the challenge. Now, had the notion of disarmament originated with France or Russia, the prospect of its being favourably entertained would have been far greater. These are great military powers, and a reduction of their strength would be something more than a diminished means of offence. It would imply a total change of policy. To send back to the fields and the factories hundreds of thousands of men-to habituate them to the independence of the peasant or the town labourer-to attach them to the soil by the ties of family, and elevate their lives by the hope of betterment-would be to effect a total revolution, and such a revolution as neither Czar nor Emperor has yet dreamed of.

Garrick, the poet tells us, "Cast off his friends like a huntsman his pack,

For he knew when he pleased he could

whistle them back.'

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But is it quite sure, if a general disarmament took place through Europe, and should endure, say for six years, that you could ever whistle back your recruits-or is it not more than likely that the system of the conscription would be doomed for ever? So much the

better, cry the reforming peace party, it is all that we ask for. Ay, but do you expect the Emperor of the French or the Czar to accept these views? Is it likely that these great rulers will see their power depart from them without any equivalent, or at least any equivalent on which they set value? Is not military power the very essence of Continental sovereignty? Do you imagine that these deliberative assemblies they call "Chambers are anything but fair-weather contrivances, to be stowed away when the gale freshens and the sea runs high? How long do you believe they will be endured after they have dared to offer an opposition to him who has made them?

Let us bear in mind that English greatness is not foreign greatness; our ideas on this score are as unlike those of any Continental opinion as are our notions about food or dress, literature or law; and indeed if we wanted to make converts, we could far more easily induce foreigners to eat underdone beef and read Miss Braddon, than adopt any suggestion we could offer on military matters.

Not only have we relinquished all pretensions to increase of empire, but there would seem a sort of rivalry amongst our statesmen as to how best we could get rid of much that we have; and it would be a kind of success for a Colonial Secretary to be able to tell us that Canada was gone and Australia was going. The smaller our possessions, the easier to watch them; and the theory is, the fewer the sheep, the less need of a herdsman. There is no denying this, although one may not exactly say that he accepts all the consequences with satisfaction. The theory, however, gains advocates every day; and the man who will rise in his place, and declare that we ought to restore Gibraltar to Spain, and give Malta to Italy, will have a more astounding popularity than even he who annihi

lated the compound householder. These peculiarities of statesmanship are, however, essentially English-they belong to us, and to no one else. They are ours, like Protestantism, and Respectability, and Bitter Beer; all the more ours that no one would rob us of them. The nation which professes that she does not care to keep what she has, can scarcely preach with profit to those whose desire is to have what does not belong to them.

If, in a holy horror at Turf atrocities to which certain recent scandals have given additional pointMr Bright should openly declare that he had abandoned all idea of a racing establishment, the announcement would scarcely carry with it the same amount of enforced conviction as if it came from Lord Hastings or Sir Joseph Hawley; and so, when I read that England

counsels a reduction of all military power on the Continent, I am struck as if I heard that Bavaria declared she was ready to diminish her navy! If I were like the correspondent of a certain clever journal that we all know of, I could probably tell how Alexander, or Frederick William, or Franz Joseph, enjoyed the joke of this purely English hint. I might even be able to add what his Majesty or his Imperial Highness observed to me at supper on the subject; but as I have no access to such august company, I can only imagine with what dry humour they must chat over the suggestion, and how sarcastically laugh at the nation of shopkeepers for daring to dictate to the nations of gladiators.

Suum cuique-we make capital cotton stockings and some excellent crockery.

AN ADIEU TO OUR VILLAGE.

There is a well-known story of a poor prisoner for debt, who, having obtained his liberation by some general act of grace, ardently begged he might be permitted to end his days in the durance to which some forty odd years had accustomed him. I never thoroughly understood the force of this poor fellow's logic till a few days ago, when, by the accidents of life, the incident came home to myself.

I, too, am about to be liberated. I am set free to quit the village in which, for nigh twenty years, I have been a sojourner. Not, indeed, essentially a prisoner, in the sense of high walls and strong bolts; but all as much bound by the little ties of life to pass an existence within certain narrow limits, and conform to the ways and habits of a place, which, had I made the attempt, I should have found myself as unable to change or alter, as would the humble debtor afore

said have been to introduce reforms into the Marshalsea.

I cannot believe that the prisoner really liked his prison-liked its daily discipline, its uniform round of small observances, its dietary, or its company. I cannot imagine that any man could be so constituted that the want of freedom alone would not have weighed heavily on his heart, and impressed him with a painful sense of inferiority in comparison with the meanest of those who were free and at large. Nor can I picture to myself a creature whose mind would not stray at times beyond the walls of his cell, and revel in some old remembered spot dear to his boyhood and bright in all the colours of early youth; but I can well conceive how, by the slow march of time, another nature gradually supplanted the old one-how the usages of a life of unbroken uniformity, bit by bit, entered into his very soul, and the outer world,

the world outside the high walls, became to him as mythical as anything that may go on in one of the planets.

In many respects our village was wonderfully like a jail. First of all, the mode of life was singularly regular and monotonous. Every one did exactly like his neighbour -our dress, our diet, our hours of up-rising and down-lying, were all identical; we took pleasure in the same amusements; and had we ever arrived at the sensation of sorrowing for anything or deploring anything, I am sure our griefs would have been as identical as our joys; and lastly, as in a prison, each was there for something he had either done or had omitted to do, and here was a bond of fellowship stronger and more enduring than any other in all existence.

No one who has not worn the convict's jacket can form the slightest conception of the good-fellowship of the galleys. There is a freemasonry in fetters that passes all the mysteries of Noble Grands and Black Princes. The fact is, that everything in life has a relative significancy-we are rich or poor, strong or weak, great or insignificant, according to what immediately surrounds us; and the coat which would pass muster very creditably in St Giles's would be marvellous bad wear in Bond Street or Piccadilly. So is it of morals. Now, in our village, there were possibly some small things that a rigid moralist might have demurred to. I will not say that there might not have been, here and there, passing occasion for censure on this or on that; but one virtue I boldly claim for us, and I challenge Europe to dare a rivalry with it. We were, and we are, eminently tolerant. Whether this great quality came of the largeness of our natures generally, or of that long and intimate study of human frailty which passed under our eyes, or of both combined, I

know not. I but vouch for the fact. I will not go so far as to say we were hopeful of human nature generally; for hope is a prospective quality, and we were all too essentially wrapped up in the present to waste a thought on what was to come: but we had great store of that charity which thinketh well of all things-and what a balm must it have been to many a crushed and wounded spirit to have known that there was one small spot in Europe, a mere village if you will, where no memory of bygones could reach him! or if they came, could they affect his fame or touch his fortune! Wolves and lambs, we all lay down together, with the tacit understanding that the habits were to be those of a peaceful sheepfold, and that in these pasturages, at least, none was to devour his neighbour. And now I am going to leave all this, and to venture upon a new penitentiary, where I don't even know one of my fellowprisoners, nor have I as much as seen the turnkey.

No wonder if I grow heavyhearted if I think of it. I had grown so habituated to all here that life cost me no effort. I went on as a steamer does after the screw has ceased revolving,smoothly, quietly, wavelessly-getting each moment nearer to the mooring; and now I have to get up steam and be off to a new roadstead.

Has it ever, most bland reader, been your fate, when seated at a very pleasant little dinner with familiar and fond faces around you, to have received a sudden order from His Imperial Highness the Grand-Duke of Kamtschatka, or the Hospadar of Taganraggenoff, to dine with him-an invitation which is a command, and to accept which you have to make a hurried exit from your friends, and hasten off with all speed to invest yourself in gold lace and embroidery, to

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